August 24, 2058

Athabaskan Oil West-Side Gas Station

Regina, Algonkian-Manitou Council

~~~

The stress of the Humboldt mission to slaughter ghouls had kept Leon and Sylvia out of commission for a week. Brandon wasn't particularly perturbed by it, but then he was a Rivers, and had probably seen more mercy killings than anyone else in the world.

The week off was good, but Leon felt a hankering for some action. All things considered, between the contract killing, the mountains of bodyguard and courier runs, and the two government jobs, this had been a pretty slow summer. There were times he almost wished he had taken the ill-fated run against Aztechnology earlier in the summer, the one that claimed the worthless life of Lex Overstreet. That disaster was still joked about on the local Shadowland forums, but Leon knew that was a trap run, and that even someone competent would've risked a lot trying to spring through the trap.

Luckily, a trip back to Donovan Reed gave him some action. Or at least, something resembling action.

"So here's how this run works. My client, who shall remain nameless, was wrongly fired from a job at the BarrierSafe Security Group, and wants to ruin the reputation of their former manager. The client wishes for you to break into BarrierSafe's offices, doctor some personnel files, and upload some timed future press releases to their datastores. For this, you'll get 500 nuyen, and obviously they won't care about any other datastore activities."

Leon shook his head and sighed.

"500 nuyen for a company run COMBINED with a Matrix run. Why on earth do you think anyone would take this job?"

"They were desperate." said Donovan, while shrugging. "I got my percentage and the fee up front, and they literally went on their knees begging for me to get this done. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a sob story."

"Yeah, and I'm the next Ceremonial Chief."

Leon shook his head, but damn, he was thinking about it. BarrierSafe's data wasn't worth a lot on the open market, especially if he couldn't find a fixer willing to take it. Besides this job, it was just escorts and packages, or smuggling into the Sioux or Salish-Shidhe. Leon wasn't keen on the latter, because getting super-involved in smuggling might lead to David Longmiles actually taking action to prevent it. Which would ruin things for everyone else.

"......Why did this client get fired anyways?"

Donovan smirked. "Apparently, our client was left carrying the can for the death of a certain Yokogawa employee earlier this summer. It was attributed to some sort of BarrierSafe security outage. The boss needed someone to frame for incompetence to avoid getting in trouble, and our client got picked."

Leon kept a cool poker face.

"How bout that."

"Yeah, how ABOUT that. Don't worry, no one's really sure it was you who geeked that suit. Couple sources in Long Arms say that Detective Summers ruled you out, and had a pissing contest with Longmiles over it. And my paymasters don't give a frag who did it, because they seemed to want him geeked anyways. Probably saved them some money."

Leon was always amazed at how rumours about anything could get distributed through the shadows and return to the subject. Sometimes it was accurate, sometimes it was utterly convoluted. Leon guessed a lot of people in the shadows probably thought he did it simply because no one had been caught yet. Not that Yokogawa was looking too hard.

It seemed with this run, Donovan was trying to appeal to Leon's sense of justice. Of course, Donovan wasn't lying to him, and there was a chance Donovan's client wasn't lying to Donovan either. But Leon's danger sense wasn't triggering. If this was all true, it was a mess Leon made, and one he could clean up. Besides, BarrierSafe deserved to be run against for being such an incompetent mess in the first place. Sure, it was a passable company for defending lower and middle-class people from gutter filth, but the Council really deserved better.

"Alright, when does the client want this done?"

"The client says the best window is this week."

"I'm out then." piped up Brandon from the back. "Just took a glance at my cell. I'm needed for family business this week."

Brandon lit up a nicopipe and stared vacantly into the distance. Donovan took the opportunity to send a horrified look Leon's way. Being part of the Rivers family, the words "family business" from Brandon's mouth could mean a variety of things, many of them deeply unpleasant. The Rivers family didn't always start fights, but if one was brought to their doorstep, they would finish it in the most painful and brutal fashion they could think of, and they thought of a lot of things.

"Sylvia, its your call. I'd need your help to do this right and do this clean."

Sylvia mulled over it for a while.

"Can we keep the body count down?"

"From what I remember of BarrierSafe? Probably."

Sylvia shrugged.

"Take it."

Leon shook Donovan's hand.

"Rooked me into another job there Donny. I hope you're satisfied......"

Donovan smiled. "You won't regret it. You rarely do."

~~~

August 27, 2058

BarrierSafe Regina Office

Regina, Algonkian-Manitou Council

~~~

Leon took another careful look at the situation through his binoculars. As expected, BarrierSafe's office security procedures were lax. One guard around the back door, one near a side entrance, two in front, none particularly attentive or competent-looking. Sylvia saw no one in the building via her tracking spells through the astral plane. As soon as he got the call from his decker contact, the cameras and other low-end security measures inside would be disabled, leaving BarrierSafe virtually defenseless once the guards were taken out of play.

"Remember Sylvia, use the lesser form of Invisibility. We don't have any mages or cameras to worry about, and I don't want to see you in a rathole StreetDoc clinic again."

"I got it, I got it."

At that moment, Leon got a call from his decker contact, a local act going by the handle "OddOneIn"

"It's done?"

"It's done. Their IC is a little better than three months ago, but not by much. Why don't you just have me doing the whole job anyways? You'll just botch it up!"

"Because we need to break in and access it from the office of some vice president, make it look like we're uploading blackmail from him. I doubt you're feeling limber today."

"I could do that with a few edits to their access logs easy!"

OddOneIn then started bursting out with laughter. Not because he thought what he said was funny, but because of a mental quirk he had. The rumour was that he had suffered brain damage trying to bypass BlackIce, a powerful Intrusion Countermeasure program in the Matrix. BlackIce could send biofeedback through a decker's datajack and into their brain, and enough attacks from a competent BlackIce could leave someone in a coma...... or worse......

At any rate, OddOneIn was a changed and warped man due to something, and random bouts of laughter was one of a few odd quirks he had. Hence his street nickname. But Leon considered him to be competent, reliable, and friendly, and you couldn't ask for much more from a local decker contact.

"Just sit tight in your hovel Odd One, I'll have your pay in a couple days."

"Take care, shadowboy!"

OddOneIn added another burst of cackling laughter before hanging up. Leon knew that it was go time. This should be easy, but there was always a sense of trepidation breaking into a corp, the natural enemy of shadowrunners. There was always the thought that he'd be another bullet-riddled blood smear on a corporate wall.

Leon grabbed a lighter and a band of firecrackers, and Sylvia cast Invisibility on both of them, a lesser version of her signature spell. At this level, it could still fool the eyes of non-mages, but could not fool heat-sensing cameras or Awakened mages. If OddOneIn disabled the cameras though, then they'd have nothing to worry about. No Awakened were known or expected to work for such a third-rate outfit.

Leon lit the firecrackers, and screamed some general anarchist and anti-corp sayings in a high-pitched falsetto voice, before tossing them near a glass front of the BarrierSafe offices. Hearing the sounds, the guards vacated their positions, thinking someone was shooting up their building. Leon and Sylvia, under cover of Invisibility, silently went around the dashing guards to the now-unwatched back entrance. Leon swiped through a Maglock with a high-level Maglock Passkey, and slipped into the back before the guards knew what was happening.

Now time for the second part of the run.....